Edgar Allan Poe

Samuel VonBehren

A Dream Within a Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow:

You are not wrong who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is that therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand--

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep--while I weep!

O god! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O god! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

Edgar Allan Poe often talks about the way people think and people's imaginations in his poetry.

This poem has two stanzas and rhymes in groups of twos and threes. The lines have close to the same amount of syllables. Some of the rhymes don't actually rhyme, but are close (such as none and gone).

In the first stanza, it says that it isn't wrong to question the difference between what is real and what is just a dream. It also says that we shouldn't think that our lives are any less important because of that. It says that just because we don't necessarily know the difference between dreams and what is real, we shouldn't change anything about the way that we live.

In the second stanza, I believe that the poem is saying that in life, no matter how hard you try to control it, you cannot.